Week 22 - ngetachew/Portfolio GitHub Wiki

This week, the Robot Penguin project came to a close, at least temporarily. In our testing during the previous weeks, we found that the way that the Delta Arm was constructed mechanically limited its movement such that it couldn't reach two corners of the screen, and it could only move within a small square without having to lower its height. The limbs of the stepper motors were blocked by the plate that attaches them to the frame that attaches it frame, so it isn't able to adjust itself to move to certain coordinates. The redesign will feature ODrive motors instead of stepper motors, a change which taking place in many other projects as well. The code for using ODrive motors has not been fully developed yet, but a few students are in the process of making it accessible for everyone.

My group and I spent our time adjusting things in the software, such as obstacle locations and movement speed, before we decided that there was nothing we could do. Our project was moved into a corner, and we began to help other people who were just getting started with their projects, such as wiring the Gantry Game and the Conference Sand Table. This took up the remainder of the week, as we were stripping, tinning, crimping, and soldering wires that were connected to the Pi and its ODrive controllers. We also contributed to the wiring in the Kundt's Tube. This week felt more like busywork, but in retrospect, I've become much more comfortable with soldering and wiring circuit boards. I also learned about the complexity of the wiring in these other projects, which demonstrated to me the difficulty of wiring our project pales in comparison to that of others.